Fall and Winter 2026-27 Courses (tentative)

FALL/WINTER 2026-27

GCST-7103 | Methods & Practices (Fall/Winter), required, 3 credits 
Wednesdays 6-9pm (Fall)

This course aims to equip students with an understanding of how an indefinite plethora of intersecting research skills and methodologies are relevant to and inform the critical, academic, and political project of cultural studies. It also includes discussions of some of the contemporary ethical, political, and material challenges (and potentialities) affecting the work of scholars, artists, and intellectuals in 21st Century academe, as well as other public institutions of knowledge production and dissemination simultaneously invested and troubled by critical cultural theorists, scholars, and curators. During the Fall term, students will obtain certifications in CORE (TCPS 2) and Oral History Research and will develop a seminar presentation on a research methodology of particular interest to them. Over Fall and Winter terms, students will participate in a key aspect of being an active and engaged graduate students of cultural studies by attending a range of local events related to cultural studies/curatorial practices.

GCST-7831 | Practicum in Curatorial Studies, required for Curatorial Practice Stream, 6 credits
Wednesdays 2:30-5:15

This course combines the theory and practice of curatorial work, public history and experiential learning for students interested in achieving a university credit by working with a local museum or art gallery. The Practicum provides opportunities to explore a range of placements with host institutions in order to learn about being a curator. Students are expected to work 6-8 hours a week in the host institution. Program partners will provide training for the interns who have chosen to work with them. Partnerships opportunities include, but are not limited to, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Plug In Contemporary Art Institute, Buhler Gallery, and other local galleries and museums.

FALL 2026

GCST-7104 | Concepts in Cultural Studies, required for Texts and Cultures Stream | Professor Popowich | Mondays 9:30-12:20

This course is an introduction to the theories and concepts of Cultural Studies. Cultural Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field, and we will look at what makes it distinct from political science, literary studies, media studies, and other associated disciplines. One aspect of Cultural Studies that makes it unique is the specific conditions of its creation. Interpretation of cultural artefacts and practices has a long history, but Cultural Studies as a discipline arose first in the particular social, political, and economic climate of post-war Britain, and takes this context as part of its object of study. For Cultural Studies, the material and political environment of cultural artefacts and texts are crucial elements in understanding them. In particular, the politics of struggle and of difference, of countercultural or subaltern cultures are vitally important. As a result, it is important to understand what is happening outside the discipline during its initial period in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, its rise to prominence in the US in the 1980s and 1990s, and the ways it continues to be useful today. In this course we will read some of the important texts of cultural studies, relate them to particular elements and changes in late-capitalist politics and economics, and interrogate the ways the theories and concepts they present can be deployed to understand contemporary cultural production. Some of the concepts and theories we will look at are: hegemony, ideology, globalization, neoliberalism, identity politics, the culture industry, social construction, materialism, representation, Marxism, feminism, post-colonialism and decolonization, postmodern thought, and Queer theory. We will also look at some of the longer-standing issues that Cultural Studies shares with other questions, such as identity politics and the politics of difference, the idea of “culture war”, and questions surrounding the politics of “high” vs. “popular” culture.                                              

GCST-7820 | Topics in Visual Cultures: Supernatural Modernism | Professor Keshavjee | Thursdays 2:30-5:20

Supernatural Modernism investigates how artists engaged with supernatural philosophies and occulture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The rise of scientific positivism and a corresponding disenchantment with mainstream religions spurred a reaction among artists, leading to an interest in ancient knowledge and hermetic philosophies. This engagement with marginal religious thought and alternative science provided a rich symbolic framework for the development of abstracted art. The course will focus on occult religious philosophies influential for artists, such as Theosophy, Vitalism, Spiritualism, Energetics, Witchcraft, and the cult of Isis. A portion of the course will involve primary research in the Hamilton Family fonds at the University of Manitoba, renowned as an archive that has been foundational to several international contemporary artists.

GCST-7901 | Topics in Gender & Sexuality: Queer Mulitspecies Artistic Entanglements | Professor Crowe | Thursdays 2:30-5:20

This interdisciplinary course provides students with an opportunity to learn about research-creation and explore queer, multi-species entanglements. Through research and study in feminist, queer & trans studies, Indigenous studies, artistic studies, geography, ecology, and environmental studies we investigate multi-species, research-creation methodologies to create entangled sites of meaning. By engaging with theory and artistic creation we explore: spaces of multi-species encounters, mutual flourishing; relationality; abundance; site-specificity; land back; plant anatomy; gift economies; caring for plant species through tending and planting; human-plant intimacies; artistic scores; artistic-process; and emotional geographies. By serious and playful engagement with these concepts, we develop queer, feminist curiosity and strategies to be in-relation with more-than-human worlds.

GCST-7112 | Topics in Cultural Theory: Identity Politics | Professor Ives | TBD

This course traces the trajectories of the heavily laden concept of ‘identity politics.’ It explores how ‘identity politics’ developed as a narrative combining approaches focused on race, ethnicity, religion, language, sexuality and gender, Indigeneity, and ableness. We look at how some discourses pit ‘identity politics’ against individualism or human universalism. Others define ‘identity politics’ in opposition to ‘class’ or economic analysis. From this exploration of ‘identity politics’ defined in terms of what is supposedly displaces, a common core of universal humanity or some purportedly more “real” typology of social groupings like economic class, we turn to exploring the politics of identities. Here we find many of those whose names are associated with ‘identity politics’ might not fit this label so well. Put another way, this course develops from asking about ‘identity politics’ to thinking through the politics of culture. The course engages a wide range of authors such as Gary Younge, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Yasha Mounk, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Sara Ahmed, Riley Snorton, Kim TallBear, and Darryl Leroux

WINTER 2027

GCST-7780 | Topics in Critical Race Studies: The Black Atlantic | Professor Sinanan | TBD       

This course focuses on the narratives of enslaved people and the visual cultures of slavery, race, and the Caribbean plantation from the 17th century to the present day. Reading with Black and Caribbean-studies theory, we will examine autobiographies, testimonios of the enslaved, alongside portraiture, prints and material culture, especially glass and present-day virtual commemorations of slavery and read these in the context of the discourse of Enlightenment race-making and critical race theory responses. We will look at the picturesque plantation and its role in white supremacist discourse. We will examine how glass as an ornamental material evolved in tandem with the history of transatlantic slavery and we will look at the work of contemporary artists such as Titus Kaphur and King Cobra to unmake the race-craft of material culture.

GCST-7850 | Topics in Media & Communication Studies | Professor Flisfeder | Mondays 6-9pm

This course provides students with a critical understanding of contemporary advances in digital culture, from the ubiquity of smartphones to the rise of augmented reality, the rise of digital automation and artificial intelligence, the ways digital culture changes our understanding of human subjectivity, the looming possibility of a “posthuman” future, and the impact of digital infrastructures on climate change and the environment.

GCST-7112 | Topics in Cultural Theory: Indigenous stories, listening, and beading | Professor Lypka | TBD

This course will focus on the connection between Indigenous storytelling and material art by combining hands-on learning in traditional beadwork with listening to and reading works of resistance and resurgence. Beading can be an Indigenous research methodology used to resist colonial violence by maintaining and preserving Indigenous identity, transmitting stories and knowledge, and enacting cultural resurgence. The class will reflect on and put into practice how Indigenous ways of knowing are activated through listening while working with your hands.

GCST-7830 | Idea of the Museum | Thursdays 2:30-5:15

Museums and galleries do more than collect and exhibit objects; they participate in the packaging and presentation of the materials and ideas of culture, engaging with a diverse public and multiple stakeholders. Students examine the collecting, exhibiting and presentation practices of European and North American museums and galleries over the last two centuries with the goal of understanding their evolving role. The class explores how museums developed and are changing in response to the ideas of collecting and connoisseurship, the disciplines of art history and museology, and how these institutions reflect or relate to different ideologies, such as nationalism and colonialism.

SPRING 2027

GCST-7105 | Cultural Studies and Curatorial Practices Capstone Seminar, required, 3 credits

Two additional courses will likely be offered in Spring Term